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Requiem for a Hitman
THE TWELVE STEP SHUFFLE
By the time Dick Burns had finished interviewing the man with two cocks, it was
lunchtime.
Burns escorted his over-endowed client to the door, assured him his case would be
solved within the week. Burns handed him his homburg, camel's hair coat and cane,
smoothly closed the door behind him. Burns wheezed a sigh of relief, pulled out a
book of CVS matches, fumbled for a cigarette. His secretary looked up at the wall
clock, shook her head, resumed typing. Burns and the client had been in conference
for over three hours.
"That was long," she remarked, not bothering to look up from the keyboard.
"You're telling me. That guy can clean both ears at the same time with them."
Burns lit a cigarette, grumbled, "Gotta hand it to a man who can suck his own.
Never managed it myself." He wet fingers and pinched out the match. "Big
time plugboy got screwed out of forty grand in residual video fees by his producer,
a chump by the name of Demerol. He jumped bail on a felony manhole cover trafficking
charge. Mr. Over-endowed wants me to track him down and nail his ass. Christ, why
do I take these jobs?"
"Because it's the only one you've had in a month?" she quipped.
"Now you're cooking with gas. Hold my calls, will you?"
"How do you want me to hold them?"
"Use your imagination. Meathooks...between your kneeswhat the hell am I paying
you for?" Burns straggled into his office and slammed the door. He went to the
wet bar, mixed himself a Kon Tiki Tavi, sat in his Virbromatic Barcolounger, and
listened to the traffic outside not move. He was thumbing through the Jean-Claude
van Dong files when the secretary barged in.
"There's a a man to see you, Dick. He's very insistent. He claims he's a friend
of yours? From Mars?" That could mean only one thing.
"Burnsey! How the hell are you? Where's your liquor?"
It was Barre. Sam Barre: ace private dick with a hollow leg.
"Barre, what the hell are you doing here? I thought you were still in the Betty
Ford Clinic."
"Is that any way to talk to the man who's going to make you rich?" Barre
mugged, throwing books on the floor in a futile search for Burns's liquor cabinet.
He settled on snatching Burns's tiki glass out of his hands.
"I don't even want to hear it, Barre. Just turn around and take your sorry,
drunk ass back under the rock it came from."
"Burns, I need your help. Honest to God, this is on the up and up. Bob's your
uncle. Twenty five g's. Cash. Tax free." Barre slapped a wad of bills on the
desk. He folded his arms and stood back with a Cheshire grin plastered to his pockmarked
face. Burns casually shoved the money back like he was refusing a second cup of pee.
"I don't want your filthy money, Barre. I don't know where that roll's been."
"Aw, c'mon Burns. I owe you from the last job we did together. I want to make
up for leaving you hanging in the wind."
Burns kept a suspicious eye on the bills. Barre owed him for getting Juan "The
Oildrum" Roselli to turn state's evidence in a murder case Barre was mishandling
for the DA. Burns managed to convince an impressionable Roselli that if he didn't
testify, the Feds would deport him back to Bolivia, even though he was a native Sicilian.
The mere threat of facing the La Paz organ harvesters was enough to turn Roselli
into a blathering mass of stool pigeon. When the trial date came, Barre was out on
a three-week bender with his latest secretary. He never showed. Burns had to handle
the case alone. He stared into Barre's bloodshot, stoned basset hound eyes. Barre
looked like he was being sent out to play with the rabid raccoons.
"Why the hell should I trust you, Barre? Is there an asshole sign on me somewhere.
It's on my back, right?"
Barre took out a bar of Irish Spring from his tattered jacket, began whittling. It
was a habit he'd acquired while working the chain gangs in the Big Easy. That made
Burns nervous. If past experience was any indicator, Barre whittling usually meant
Burns got to look forward to a bigger hat size courtesy Mr. Sap.
"Listen, Burns. Hear me out. If this isn't on the up-and-up, I take the red
eye back to Mars City. Deal?"
Burns silently contemplated the offer, checked his watch. "Ah, rat hell. You
got five minutes, Barre. Dazzle me."
"Alright!" Barre chimed, rubbing his soap bar fondly and seating himself
across from Burns. "Get a load of this: the Proteus Software Company contracted
me a month ago to put the nibs on some punk who'd swiped this hush-hush software
package of theirs. I was doing background research through the company personnel
files when I found that the prime suspect, the only person with access to the software
and the means to heist it, was Dutch Harrelson; the same Harrelson that was picked
up for driving the Good Humor truck that that " Barre broke down sobbing, carelessly
cutting off the head of the Lincoln he was carving. Burns sighed, reached into a
torn Buster Brown shoe box under his desk, poured Barre a double vodka with a twist
of lemming. It was Parker's drink.
Barre idolized Parker, his partner for more years than either of them cared to remember.
Parker got him into the P.I. business when Barre was fresh out of the asylum and
still cleaning up after circus freaks. A year ago, Parker bought the farm in a freak
ice cream-related accident and Barre hadn't crawled out of the bottle since. Burns
never did have the heart to tell him that Parker was fucking Barre's wife and his
daughter at the same time. Burns still kept the pictures that Parker gave him of
his two love slaves giving each other milk baths. They helped Burns get through many
a lonely night when his VCR was on the fritz.
Barre sniffed, "I need you on this one, Burns. You're the only one with the
intel connections that I need to close this case. You're the only one I can trust.
This whole software scam has CIA written all over it."
Burns put his cigarette out on his fist, said "Give me three good reasons I
should give you the time of day, Barre. And the first two don't count."
"Proteus is paying a hundred g's for the software. Half now, half when we deliver
the goods. The 25 g's is your cut."
"No soap. It ain't worth it to me, Barre. You're more trouble than a Beirut
traffic cop. I might as well paint a bullseye on my ass and run naked through Sarajevo.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got other clients to attend to." Burns unzipped
his pants and reached for the remote.
"Yeah, I heard," Barre snapped back bitterly. "Still doing penny ante
work for porn stars and law firms, eh? Come on, Burns, you're better than that. We
both are. What happened to the Dick Burns who waxed Mao and put his head on ice?"
Burns stared at the glowing bud of his cigarette. "He died, Barre. He went up
in flames with his trailer home, his ferret, and his fiancee." He ground the
burning embers of the cigarette butt into his scarred palm. Burns zipped his pants
up, escorted Barre to the door. Barre halted abruptly.
"I didn't want to do this, Burns. But Harrelson it was him. He's the one who
planted that pipe bomb, the one that killed Roxanne."
Burns halted, crushed the Zippo lighter in his hand until it was a bloody, collapsed
mass of steel and butane. Burns growled between clenched teeth.
"What the hell did you say?"
"It's all in the Proteus files, Burns. Harrelson's a contract hitman for the
Chicago Mafia. The Mob sent him to blow up your home as payment for getting Roselli
to spill. But "
"But I wasn't home that day, was I? And Roxanne was," Burns sneered. His
vacant eyes fell upon the faded Polaroid of his fiancee on his desk. Roxanne was
proudly clad in a Panamanian banana boat captain's uniform with a riding crop and
white kid thigh boots. Burns was cowering in an aluminum tub at her feet, covered
head-to-toe in tapioca pudding. "They were still pulling parts of her out of
the neighbor's trees when I got back home. I swear to God, Barre, if you're lying
about any of this " Burns dropped the remote and the lighter, pulled out his
.45 and chambered a round.
"I swear. I swear as a Freemason, Burns. It's the truth."
Burns went back to his desk, poured himself a highball. He swigged it like it was
the last he was ever going to get. If he was going to be working with Barre, it was
just a matter of time before he was digging balls of lead out of his ass.
"I want proof, Barre. Papers, photos, manifests, blueprints, straps. Everything
you got."
"Right here," Barre replied, slapping a soiled manila envelope on the table.
"Draw your own conclusions."
Barre dumped the envelope's contents on the table and they settled back into their
chairs. Barre resumed carving the headless Lincoln, albeit without much enthusiasm.
Burns angrily carved his forearm with an X Acto razor. They quietly reappraised their
respective situations. They had both had the most important person in their lives
torn from them like an infected hangnail. In the icy silence, they made a vow: there's
gonna be one podiatrist in this town who wasn't getting his license renewed.
After poring over the photos and manuscripts, Burns pushed his chair back from the
table, said, "I asked you for your reasons, Barre. You gave them. I'm in. But
on two conditions."
"Shoot."
"One: when we find Harrelson, I get first crack at him. Two: you get your ass
back into AA."
"Done deal. Let's talk it over at the Dubliner."
They both rose to leave.
" One more thing, Barre."
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for sharing."
A BOY AND HIS DOG
The Dutchman was a man of parts.
Mostly limbs and torsos.
He was such a considerate little boy that after he'd raped, dismembered and shoved
his mother up a chimney, he took her miniature collie for a walk around the park.
Later that evening, he did the same to the dog. Before he hit the road, he set fire
to the old homestead and wrote a ballad about the experience. If there were more
kids around like the Dutchman, there'd be little need for retirement homes.
Sam and Dick spoke fondly of their mutual nemesis over warm beer.
"Cross-eyed loon," Burns squawked. "I should've let him have it in
the face with both barrels while I had the chance."
"Straight-UP," Barre replied, nursing his Guinness and fondly stroking
his gun. "Last time I ran into the Dutchman was in Curacao in '75. He was working
the Malay heroin run for the Gambino family. He'd waxed the sister of the U.S. ambassador
because she gave him a lousy hand job. Her folks hired me track him down. I had the
bastard right in the crosshairs, a clear head shot. I couldn't miss. The freak looked
like a shaved yeti with Down's Syndrome. I got that close to busting a cap in his
thick skull. Buncha fuckin' French tourists got in the line of fire." He cursed
into his beer, "Goddamn frogs."
Burns let out a hearty wet belch, snapped a Galois into his mouth. "Well, I'm
ready for that useless piece of human garbage." Burns whipped back the flaps
of his black leather trenchcoat revealing a sawed-off, semiautomatic shotgun. "And
his dog! I loaded Betty up specially for him: rock salt, broken glass and rusty ten
penny nails smeared in feces. Old family recipe."
"Yeah, the Manson family." Barre lit up another cigarette. "So you
got the artillery, where's the target?" He pulled out a bar of Neutrogena, began
working on an Edwin Stanton.
"I spread some of that Proteus cash around," Burns puffed. "My main
man Huggy Bear tells me Semprini hired the Dutchman to do a cranial ventilation number
on a circuit court judge who won't cancel a parking ticket. The Dutchman's holed-up
in an abandoned homeless shelter in Foggy Bottom waiting for his handler to send
him orders."
"Let's move!" Barre cried, neatly severing a limb off of Lincoln's Secretary
of State.
Burns grabbed him by the arm. "That's your problem, Barre. You think you can
just walk up to a serial killer and reel him in like a goddamn trout." He sat
back and began thoughtfully paring his fingernails. "I think it's time the Dutchman
and I played a little phone tag."
DIAL M FOR MONKEYSPANK
Apart from dismemberment and ritual self-abuse, the Dutchman had one weakness.
Whenever he was in town, he always called the same phone sex operation, "Amputee
Nuns in Bondage." Since the shelter's phone lines had been stripped, Burns figured
he had to be doing it cellular. Back at his office, Burns tuned his Radio Shack scanner
to the phone sex bandwidth and set the channel selector on random. After hours of
listening to snippets of the drab fantasies of college kids, legal secretaries, and
Congressional aides, the Dutchman's disturbing Waco drawl dripped from the speaker
like a molasses covered inbred.
Burns fired up his computer, loaded his tracing software and logged onto the AT&T
internal security net. After a few arcane access codes and a brief modem screech,
he was in. Barre poured them both a lemon squash and stared at the screen.
"Y'know your problem, Barre? You're a goddamn Luddite. You'd rather pound the
pavement than have some machine do the work for you."
"Hey, if I can't slap around a few stool pigeons and whores, I might as well
go back to Circus, Circus." He shaved a lobe off of Stanton's ear.
"Alright, we type in the phone sex number and the time the call was made and
we should get a listing of numbers." After a moment, a dizzying stream of numbers
scrolled onto the screen. Burns feverishly punched the keyboard. "We delete
all those not originating from the Foggy Bottom subdivision code and "
A single green number flashed on the blank screen.
"OK," Barre grunted, "so we got the Dutchman's phone number. What
are we going to do with it? Ask him if his fridge is running?"
"Watch and learn." Burns picked up the lavender princess phone and dialed
up the Dutchman's number that flickered on the screen like a dying firefly. A groggy
voice answered.
"Whoizit?"
Burns picked his nose, examinded his finger. "Whatever those fucks are paying
you for the software, I'll double it."
"Who the hell is this?"
"None of your business, Dutchman. I got a quarter mil that says you'll give
the software to us, no questions asked. Take it or leave it."
Burns could hear the slimy little gears turning in the Dutchman's head.
"Where do you want to meet?" he snapped.
Burns rolled his booger between his thumb and forefinger. "You name the place."
"Top of the old incinerator in Georgetown. Noon. And if I see any cops, FEMA
or Defense Mapping Agency boys, the software's history."
"Straight-UP."
The phone went dead. Burns calmly lit an Old Gold, grabbed Stanton away from his
companion. Leaning back in his chair, Burns pitched the soap figure at an imaginary
bug on the water-damaged ceiling. It sailed across the room, landed in a bowl of
wax fruit, sandwiched between three dusty plums and a cracked pomegranate
"You don't honestly expect him to show up, do you?" Barre asked.
"He has to. Either he's got to take the money or he's got to kill me. I know
too much about this software theft. Anyway, you're going to shadow him. Try not to
be too conspicuous."
"I hope you know what the hell you're doing."
Burns rolled his boogers off on the bottom of his desk. "Of course I don't,"
he retorted. "Who does?"
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF OF MY MOUTH
The Dutchman perched himself precariously on the roof of the Rosslyn Marriott
and assembled his rifle. He screwed on the foot-long aluminum silencer, assumed a
prone position, belly down, the gun resting on his satin Journey tour jacket. He
would occasionally take a bite out of his Jif and Goober Grape sandwich as he combed
the Georgetown skyline.
He squinted through the rubberized Zeiss scope, sighted in on the roof of the abandoned
incinerator across the Potomac. He chambered a round and waited. He checked his Swatch.
Eight minutes later, a figure in a black trenchcoat and porkpie hat emerged on the
roof with a suitcase and sat on the edge, his back facing the Dutchman. Dutch grinned,
picked a clump of peanut butter sandwich from the roof of his mouth.
"Won't that bastard Burns ever learn? Never fuck with the Dutchman."
He slowly squeezed the trigger. The rifle's muffled report sounded like a sack of
flour hitting the kitchen floor. An instant later, the lone figure's head erupted
in a crimson shower of blood and bone. It looked as if someone had opened the spigot
of a meat hydrant.
"I'm getting too old for this," the Dutchman muttered languidly.
"Have you ever considered retirement?"
The Dutchman spun around on his back. Sam Barre's four-barreled Dingo gun was staring
back at the Dutchman's open-mouthed, pockmarked face.
"Get up nice and slow, Dutchman. I want to count the hairs up your nose. Your
hunting days are over. I'm revoking your license." Barre was still shaking from
the DT's. His three day walking abstinence had taken its toll.
Cracking a gap-toothed smile, the Dutchman slowly rose to his feet. As he stood,
his hidden throwing knife dropped out of his sleeve and into his right hand. Slicker
than oiled okra, the Dutchman flung the knife, slicing open an artery in Barre's
gun arm. Barre collapsed, dropping the Dingo on the graveled roof. As the Dutchman
dived for the gun, it erupted in a hail of glass, rock, and smoke.
"Back off, Dutch. And keep your filthy paws where I can see them."
Burns fingered the trigger of his smoking shotgun.
"Burns!" Barre and the Dutchman shouted in unison.
"Everybody knows you can't resist a good open headshot, Dutch," he said,
his yellowed incisors clenching a match. Burns was naked except for his fedora and
a pair of Chuck Taylors. "I paid a homeless guy I met in the incinerator a sawbuck
to wear my duds and climb to the roof. Shame he had to go that way, but I knew Dutch
here would be humane about killing him. Or me, I should say." Burns helped Barre
to his feet.
"But how did you know he'd be up here?" Barre whined, trying to stem the
flow of blood from his arm with a bible tract that a grinning Christian zombie had
handed him on K Street.
Burns pulled a cigarette from behind his ear, struck the match on his teeth, lit
it. "It's the only place with a clear line of fire to the incinerator. Now why
don't you be a good boy and cough up the software?"
The Dutchman smirked like a crocodile who's just eaten a fudge-dipped poodle. "Go
to hell, Burns!"
Burns blasted the Dutchman's left knee cap out from under him. The gunman fell to
the roof, a torrent of blood and rock salt spewing forth from the severed stump.
"Didn't your mama teach you manners?"
"Glaaaagh! Christ, gimme a doktah!"
"Paging Doctor Giggles!" Barre yelled, grabbing the Dingo gun. He fired
an incendiary slug into the Dutchman's kneecap. "That one's for Parker, you
bastard!"
Burns placed the shotgun's barrel on the Dutchman's shoulder and fired, neatly severing
arm from trunk. A hail of blood, flesh and rusted nails splattered on Burns's naked,
pastry white flesh. The Dutchman flopped on the ground like a bloodied beluga whale
in a Foghat t-shirt.
"And that one's for Roxanne, fucker!" Burns howled.
The whimpering Dutchman raised his one good arm in a futile plea for mercy.
"The software the software's in my suitcase the shelter Mother Bobby I'm coming,
Bobby! No, no, please not the heat finger! The Chinaman, the Chinaman gonna crack
down on Hitler and and the dance troupe oh, Mamma please!"
Sam and Dick stared at each other. For a fleeting moment, they recognized a look
of compassion and pity in each other's eyes that neither found particularly appealing
or welcome. The look quickly transformed into primal screams of rage and unrelenting
sarcasm that echoed from the roof to the city below. They bore down on the Dutchman,
rammed their guns in his babbling mouth.
"And this one," they shouted, "is for Jackie Kennedy!"
THE LOST WEEKDAY
"Y'know Dick, I think you drink too much."
"Put a cork in it, Sam. You got your software, you got your money, you even
got the guy who waxed Parker and the President. Now get the hell away from me."
Burns downed his fourth bourbon in one gulp. Barre quietly sniffed at a Moxie and
lime.
"Dick, I think you need to heal your inner child."
"I aborted my inner child years ago, Sam."
"Dick, I'm not going to be your enabler any more."
"Y'know Sam, I'm really sorry I made you go to AA. Now you've turned into the
most self righteous piece of "
"You're just projecting."
Burns crushed his glass into his hand.
"Are you always so tense after you blast the back of someone's head out?"
Sam asked.
"Just thinking about Roxanne. She'd be sixteen this week." Burns looked
down into the puddle of blood, bourbon, and broken glass. A drunk jerk stared back
at him.
"Get over it, pal. Don't let your liver rule your life. Or your dick. Here."
Sam slid him a copy of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
"No thanks, Sam," he said, pushing the blood-soaked book back at him. "the
Twelve Steps are just addiction minus the pleasure. I'll stick with Camus, Racer
X, and Johnny Walker."
"Suit yourself, Dick. I gotta catch the 12:15 to Mars City. I'm opening a self-help
bookstore and smartbar!"
"Yeah, whatever." Burns returned to the bloody bourbon puddle, tried to
lap up a few drops from fingers. "Just don't forget that Thirteenth Step."
"What's that?"
Burns made a pistol with his right hand, put it to his temple, said, "Bang."
Sam hopped off his stool and skipped toward the bar door while whistling Red Rubber
Ball. Once there, he playfully shouted across the empty bar.
"Hey, Dick!" Burns looked up from the bloody counter at Barre, smiling
in the doorway.
"What?"
"Thanks for sharing!"
Burns grabbed a bottle of seltzer from behind the counter and heaved it at Barre
as he scurried out the door.
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